Low cost PNDs flourishing in Europe

€99 - Danew GS125

A large number of low cost PNDs are flooding the market these days in Europe, and low cost does not necessary mean low level quality and no customer support: two examples in Germany and France shows it clearly.

Starting June 20, the hard discount store Aldi Nord – a big retailer in Germany – will sell the latest Medion PND for €299, an excellent example of “high end-low cost” product. Indeed for this price the consumer gets a 4.3 inches touch screen, a SiRF StarIII GPS antenna, an integrated Bluetooth hands free kit, 512 MB integrated memory plus a 1 GB SD card, the Western Europe maps (Navteq), Traffic (free for Germany) with a TMC antenna, a travel guide for 50 European cities, a MP3 player and picture viewer, an Outlook contacts synchronization application, a 36 months warranty and a 365 days/year support hotline.

In France cdiscount.com, one of the biggest e-tailer for consumer electronics, launched last week a special deal for a Danew GS125 PND at €99. At this price one might think this is a stripped down PND, but it is not: 3.5 inches screen, SiRF StarIII GPS, French maps (Navteq) on 256 Mb SD card, Destinator software. Obviously here there is no additional feature, but the French market has still to be penetrated; Benoit Simeray, vice President sales southern Europe at TomTom was recently explaining in an interview that 95% of the French consumers buying a GPS today were doing their first GPS acquisition.

What is also interesting in the low cost products sold through hard discounters is that an important part of these sales will not show up in market research figures; for example GFK does not cover Aldi sales.